The last time the Tory leader tried to persuade voters he was serious, few took him seriously. In 2011, he kicked off his campaign at a suburban Scarborough home by promising to ditch the hated HST and fix hydro rates, but didn’t sound credible.

This time, Hudak says, he’s learned the lessons of the 2011 election. On Monday, two-and-a-half years after his last kickoff, he got another kick at the can.

And shot himself in the foot.

It was a self-inflicted wound on friendly territory: The MetalWorks recording studio should have been a pitch-perfect photo-op backdrop, an admirably edgy setting.

Hudak was in fine form as he tinkered with the sound console and toured the sprawling facility with its owner, Gil Moore. Looming above them as they walked to the microphone, a bold blue banner proclaimed Hudak’s signature policy:

But no sooner had Hudak spoken about the many fine jobs created at this fine facility, it was pointed out that the Tory opposition had voted against the $45 million Ontario Music Fund in the 2013 budget that helped Moore’s operation. It was also pointed out that his friendly host had warmly congratulated the Liberal government for its policy supporting the hundreds of students enrolled at his facility.

How to reconcile this awkward contradiction? Hudak smiled his best game face smile and repeated that he has a serious plan of his own:

A Million Jobs Plan. Just not a Music Fund plan.

Hudak defended his position valiantly, if politely, careful to avoid sounding like an ungrateful guest. Given his party’s ideology, the Tory’s leader’s position was certainly defensible — even if risible in this particular setting.

Even more awkwardly, Hudak was reluctant to spell out how his Million Jobs Plan would work, on the grounds that it’s still too early in the campaign to go into detail. But he has hinted at its broad objectives in the past:

A smaller public sector. More training for skilled trades (unless, perhaps, you’re in the music industry?). More affordable hydro rates. Lower taxes. No more budget deficits (notwithstanding those lower taxes).

Hudak is not the only politician who has become a prisoner of election photo-ops that are disconnected from public policy realities, or in which they steadfastly refuse to give details until later in the campaign. Such is the theatre of the absurd that is the modern campaign trail.

A similar disconnect emerged in the last election when then-premier Dalton McGuinty led the media to a photo-op at a green energy manufacturer to tout its job-creation benefits. It turned out that the factory had recently cut back production and was idle for much of the time before and after the media visited.

We celebrate elections as wondrous exercises in democratic consultation, but the reality is that they are increasingly hollow exercises in which the words and pictures are neither aligned nor illuminating. Campaign road shows are just for show. At each stop, the politicians will speak to crowds ranging from a dozen supporters to a few hundred onlookers — which is no way to reach the more than 8 million eligible voters ahead of the June 12 provincial election. At the end of the day the most effective and democratic way to reach voters is through televised leaders’ debates that are broadcast into everyone’s home or piped into their computer.

Good on the NDP’s Andrea Horwath for seeking more debates in this campaign. The three major parties have tentatively agreed to hold a debate on northern issues (it wasn’t televised last time), but the rest of Ontario’s 13 million people deserve more than a single province-wide debate.

Quebec held two televised leaders’ debates in its recent election. Our federal leaders hold two debates (one in each official language).

As the provincial campaign gets underway, with a photo-op or two every day — often disconnected from policy realities, as Hudak demonstrated Monday — our three big party leaders and our major networks owe it to voters to give them the real-time reality checks that can only come from televised debates.

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